Today in history

Posted: Wednesday, October 03, 2001

Today is Wednesday, Oct. 3, the 276th day of 2001. There are 89 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

In 1951, the New York Giants won the National League pennant, 5-4, as third baseman Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca at the Polo Grounds in the ''shot heard 'round the world.''

On this date:

In 1863, President Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day.

In 1929, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes formally changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

In 1941, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been ''broken'' and would ''never rise again.''

In 1941, the movie ''The Maltese Falcon'' -- the version starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston -- opened in New York.

In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt established the Office of Economic Stabilization.

In 1981, Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives.

In 1990, West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a new unified country.

In 1995, the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial found the former football star innocent of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. (Simpson was later found liable in a civil trial.)

Ten years ago: Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. South African author Nadine Gordimer was named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.